Uma Thurman - Actors and Actresses

Nationality: American.
Born:
Uma Karuna Thurman in Boston, Massachusetts, 29 April 1970.
Family:
Married 1) the actor Gary Oldman, 1990 (divorced 1992); 2) the actor
Ethan Hawke, 1998, one daughter: Maya Ray Thurman-Hawke.
Education:
Attended the Professional Children's School, New York.
Career:
Began modeling while in high school, mid-1980s; began her screen career
at age 17 in

Schneider, Wolf, "Where the '60s Never End," in
Movieline
(Los Angeles), August 1998.

* * *

Uma Thurman is a lanky, thoroughly beguiling actress whose exotic good
looks separate her from such all-American beauties as Julia Roberts and
Michelle Pfeiffer. After making her screen debut in an obscure independent
film (
Kiss Daddy Goodnight
) and appearing to little effect in an atrocious comedy throwaway (
Johnny Be Good
), Thurman established herself in her first important film: Stephen
Frears's savagely witty
Dangerous Liaisons
, made when she was all of 18, in which she plays the seduced virgin
Cecile de Volanges. Thurman more than held her own playing opposite a
well-seasoned cast (including John Malkovich, Glenn Close, and Pfeiffer).
Indeed, in a number of her subsequent roles she specialized in playing
defenseless innocents. She was especially good in this capacity in
Jennifer Eight
, in which she has the difficult role of a young blind woman who just may
be the next victim of a serial killer. In one scene, as her character is
left alone at a noisy party, Thurman's face subtly and effectively
expresses just the right amount of fear, confusion, and anxiety.

Her early-career characters ooze vulnerability even when they are sexually
experienced. In
Mad Dog and Glory
, her role in essence is that of a gift, presented to a reserved crime
scene photographer (Robert De Niro) who has saved the life of a mobster
(Bill Murray). While the focus of
Henry & June
is on the erotic relationship between the writers Henry Miller (Fred
Ward) and Anais Nin (Maria de Medeiros) in early 1930s Paris,
Thurman's June Miller is very much a part of the scenario as she
becomes the final link in a three-cornered love affair. In both these
films, Thurman is an exhilarating presence, with her characters at once
sexually alluring and deeply human. In
Mad Dog and Glory
, she is especially impressive as she interacts with De Niro.

Perhaps Thurman's most disappointing screen appearance came in Gus
Van Sant's disastrous
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.
She plays a young woman named Sissy Hankshaw, who is "somewhat of
a medical oddity" in that she was born with abnormally large
thumbs. For years, Sissy has been fulfilling her calling by hitchhiking
across America. The crux of the story details her experiences as she
encounters a band of lesbian-feminist cowgirl-revolutionaries in a western
spa-resort. The film was screened to standing-room-only crowds at the 1993
Toronto Film Festival. Van Sant was not happy with audience reaction, so
he took his work back to the editing room. Despite his alterations,
critics and audiences remained unenthralled.

Fortunately for Thurman, she escaped unscathed. Her follow-up was the most
talked-about film of 1994, and one of the most influential films of the
1990s: Quentin Tarantino's
Pulp Fiction.
Here, she exchanges vulnerability for outright kookiness and take-charge
attitude in her role as Mia, the sexy, flaky wife of a crime lord, who
spends an eventful evening in the company of hired gun Vincent Vega (John
Travolta). Mia is a character straight out of 1940s film noir, and Thurman
gives a deliciously watchable performance, full of clever and outrageous
mannerisms. As a result, she earned reams of publicity, and a Best
Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. And in the far more conventional
A Month by the Lake
, set in a totally different time and place, her performance is almost as
equally over-the-top. Here she plays Miss Beaumont, a nanny who flirts
with a dapper older man (Edward Fox) in a Lake Como, Italy, resort
immediately prior to the start of World War II.

In the second half of the 1990s, Thurman has played characters who are
coolly sexy (in the sci-fi thriller
Gattaca
); goofy and ditzy (the
Cyrano
-like romantic comedy
The Truth About Cats & Dogs
); sharp, knowing, and much-coveted (the small town slice-of-life/ensemble
piece
Beautiful Girls
); and eccentric (Woody Allen's
Sweet and Lowdown
). And her reputation was not hampered by the less-than-successful
Batman & Robin
(playing the villainous Poison Ivy) and
The Avengers
(as Emma Peel).

All these roles are linked in that they hinge on her looks—and none
offered her a character as eye-opening as that of
Pulp Fiction's
Mia. In
Sweet and Lowdown
, costars Sean Penn and Samantha Morton garnered the good reviews and
Oscar nominations; Thurman's presence mostly was overlooked.

—Rob Edelman

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